Safe in the Arms of Death
by FearNotTheLight
Summary: The sporadic thoughts of Sirius Black on life, friends, and the crack in the wall. Setting is sometime during OoTP, but it doesn't really matter to the plot. PG because of themes.


DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, but I do enjoy they're company on occasion.  
  
TITLE: Safe in the Arms of Death  
  
RATING: PG  
  
* * *  
  
...In the beginning, there were four...  
  
A not so very long time ago, if someone had told me I would be where I am now... I would have laughed in their face.  
  
Ten years...  
  
There are those that would call it a long time indeed, but me? How can I? Even now I could laugh at the irony of the situation, but I don't. Laughter is a thing of the past now. Laughter was a joy I took for granted. Sometimes I think I would give anything to be able to laugh again. To just be happy without the dark sense of foreboding that lurks in the shadows around me... To sleep without the nightmares... I live with them, because in spite of all the steps I've taken in the right direction, I deserve them. Each and every one.  
  
Remus would say otherwise, of course. He, having always been the practical one, knew us all better than we knew ourselves. Remus was good at that. But even he couldn't have predicted the fate that waited for us.  
  
It was too soon, too close to even be a part of our wildest dreams. Hogwarts was our safe haven, our home. It didn't matter what had happened over the summer or what was in the news. When we were at Hogwarts, we were together. We were brothers. We were invincible.  
  
One crack in the strongest of structures can bring an entire force crashing to the ground like so many stones upon the barren soil. We were above that. We had everything going for us. Nothing could touch us. But sometimes you don't notice the crack until its too late to save the line. Lonely, stupid little Peter was our crack... We should have known, but we didn't care to see. I should have seen.  
  
I laughed, then. Laughed at the irony of a situation too far gone to hell to possibly be true. I knew I was dreaming. Need I only to wake and find myself daydreaming in another boring History of Magick lesson as in the days of our innocent adolescence. But the dream was so far from innocent. A nightmare that still wars in my waking hours.  
  
James Potter was the best friend I could never have asked for. I let him down. I may as well have cast the killing curse myself.  
  
There are times when I try very hard to see the good in the life that I have led. My family being one of the most prominently dark wizarding families gave me a rather dark upbringing. My days in Hogwarts were fun, memorable. They were far too short. I was smart, in all my classes. I'm not really sure why everything came rather naturally to me, though it hardly matters now. It seemed strange to me, in the moment when I stood in front of the charred remains of a home that I had been to so many times, when I came face to face with harsh cruelty of violence of death eaters in the form of my best friends bloody body, that all the natural talent and intelligence and friendship meant nothing. The entire world froze in that single instant and I knew nothing.  
  
It was one of the few times in my entire life that I can remember crying. I was a Black, after all. Such emotions were below us, as my mother would have said. She would have disowned me if she hadn't already. But I, Sirius Black, wept. I remember that day more prominently than any other, I think.  
  
They always say that no matter all the good that has been in your life, you remember the worst day most of all. That was my worst day. I knew that I sent them to their graves. It was my fault, and no comforting words will ever change that. But then he cried. That first tiny sound was only a gift of God and no other. The boy who lived... Such a title as given to no other. I wish only that I could take away the need for that title. Little Harry Potter... the spitting image of his father. But I could not help Harry, either.  
  
...And then there were three...  
  
I promised myself in that moment that I would make things right, even though I knew that it would never be so. I went after Peter with nothing but a violent hatred and bitter revenge guiding me. The anger fueled me, the guilt kept me alive. I should have given more credit to Peter. After everything we'd been through, the four of us, it was Peter that brought our invincible wall down. I will never stop hating him.  
  
...And so they thought, there were only two...  
  
Azkaban. The very stuff of nightmares. Dementors, pain, torture. I didn't go crazy, and I know not what to attribute to that fact. Maybe I was too stubborn, too guilty. I still remember the rough stone walls, the cold dirty floors that I found myself dragged over more often than not. The stale stench of blood and everything else imaginable.  
  
Ten years is not so long really. I remember every day with an odd sense of clarity, and yet I remember time as nothing at all. There were no windows, no light, not sense of change. I knew only when the world forgot. I received blame, I was guilty. That was enough. And I believed it, perhaps more so than the rest of them. I was as guilty as they believed, if for the wrong reasons.  
  
That day in the shrieking shack, Remus believed me. It was a totally unfamiliar thing, that knowledge. Another part of our youth that I had taken for granted.  
  
Yes, Remus was always the practical one in our friendship. The four marauders. We would never be together again as we were. Peter, I wanted to die. James, I wanted back. But Remus I still had. I didn't deserve his friendship when we were children, and don't now. But I am too selfish to give it up. I didn't think we'd ever die, but here we are... waiting for the next.  
  
I wonder sometimes, at night, who will be the last of us. I don't want to be. It is another selfish part of my beaten down existence that I cannot stand to be alone. I think my soul has died somewhere along this cruel road of my life.  
  
I had a dream last night, and I wonder if it will come true. I haven't said a word to Remus, or anyone else for that matter, but it was, after all, just a dream. Soft billowing curtains and velvety darkness that I cannot yet define. A story for another time. I hope that someday we will be able to look back upon the past and laugh at the good memories. But this dream has rather unsettled me, but I don't know why exactly. Tomorrow will be an adventure, I think, just as all the others could have been. I am cold now, empty and yet I have more sense than I ever did.  
  
...In the beginning, there were four...  
  
...Tomorrow, there will be one... 


End file.
